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Terror victims blast failings: 'The police hung up on me'

The Local France
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Terror victims blast failings: 'The police hung up on me'
Republicans guards stand beside a wreath of flowers placed by Paris' mayor and the French president at the foot of the Statue of Marianne. Photo: AFP

Survivors of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris have slammed authorities over how they handled the response, with one woman saying police hung up on her as she called for help from inside the Bataclan.

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Monday saw the beginning of a parliamentary inquiry into how authorities handled the January and November terror attacks.
 
The attacks, which saw 17 killed in January and 130 people killed in November, have left France in a seemingly unending national state of emergency and many people looking for answers. 

Some of those affected by the November attacks spoke on Monday to a parliamentary group, sharing their experiences. 
 
"We have a thousand questions and we expect answers," said one man whose daughter was killed, reported Le Figaro newspaper.
 
Here are some of the issues that were raised during the first parliamentary meeting. 
 
-- The father of a murdered woman slammed the "atrocious" lack of preparation when it came to sharing information after the attacks. He said he learned of his daughter's death via unofficial tweets the day after the attacks. 
 
-- The daughter of a Portuguese man questioned why his death was shared with her via the Portuguese embassy a day and a half before French authorities made contact with her. 
 
-- The same woman asked why she still hasn't been allowed to the autopsy report for her father, who died outside the Stade de France. She says it would allow her to mourn. 
 
-- She added that that when she was going to identify the body of her father, a forensic worker said "Don't be worried that we aren't showing you his head, you will see a foot."
 
-- A woman in the Bataclan concert hall said that police hung up on her during a call while she had barricaded herself in a room "because she was whispering" after asking her to "speak louder". The woman said she was told she "was clogging the line and there were more urgent calls coming in."
 
In the end she said she had to get her mother, who was in another city, to relay the information to police. 
 
-- A man whose daughter was injured during a shooting on a Parisian terrace questioned how "a terrorist banned from Europe was able to direct an attack of this size".
 
-- The owner of the Belle Equipe bar, where 20 people were killed, asked why authorities are focusing so much on stripping nationalities of terrorists. "It's like trying to fix a faulty car engine by changing the seat colour," he said. 
 
The parliamentary committee will meet three times a week, and promises to provide a full report by mid July.

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